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Summary
On episode 456 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Amanda Thebe, a personal trainer with over 20 years in the fitness industry whose work has been featured in Shape, Prevention, Healthline, and Global News, about her book Menopocalypse, how I learned to thrive during menopause and how you can too.
Amanda breaks menopause into three distinct stages, perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause, and makes the case that it is far more than periods stopping and the occasional hot flash. Symptoms can include depression, anxiety, brain fog, joint pain, sleep loss, and a drop in confidence, and they can run for years before and continue after a woman’s final period.
She also tackles the fear around hormone replacement therapy left over from a flawed 2002 study, explains the real difference between FDA-approved bioidentical hormones and unregulated compounded ones, and walks through why how you eat matters as much as what you eat.
Links
- https://fitandchips.com
Key Takeaways
- Menopause is three stages, not one event, and it can span half a woman’s life. Perimenopause typically lasts 8 to 10 years and can start as early as the late 30s, as estrogen and progesterone decline erratically. Menopause is defined as 12 months without a period. Postmenopause is everything after that, for the rest of a woman’s life.
- Symptoms go far beyond periods and hot flashes. Depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, migraines, weight gain, insomnia and night sweats, short-term memory and word-finding problems, joint pain, low libido, and GI issues are all common. Amanda also points to a less talked about symptom: a drop in women’s confidence in their own athletic ability.
- Declining estrogen also lowers oxytocin, the “love and bonding” hormone. That drop can make women feel less emotionally close to their partner even when nothing about the relationship has actually changed, which can strain relationships if partners don’t understand what’s driving it.
- The 2002 study that scared people off estrogen therapy was flawed. The Women’s Health Institute report that linked estrogen to cardiovascular disease, stroke, and breast cancer was published before the data was properly analyzed. Researchers involved have since said the risk was overstated, and bodies like the North American Menopause Society and British Menopause Society now say there is no statistically significant increased risk from estrogen therapy.
- FDA-approved bioidentical hormones are not the same as unregulated “bioidentical” compounded hormones. Real bioidentical hormones match your body’s molecular structure, are tested for safety and efficacy, and are typically inexpensive with insurance. In the gap left after 2002, some compounding pharmacies sold unregulated versions, including progesterone creams that didn’t adequately protect the uterus, raising uterine cancer risk.
- Natural remedies like black cohosh and ashwagandha can help, but they cannot replace lost estrogen. They may ease mild symptoms for some women, but for women with more significant symptoms they are often not enough on their own, and neither are phytoestrogen-rich foods like soy.
- How you eat matters as much as what you eat. Amanda encourages pausing to ask if you’re actually hungry or just bored or thirsty, eating without electronics, and stopping when satisfied rather than stuffed, since estrogen fluctuations can scramble the hunger and fullness hormones ghrelin and leptin.
- Amanda’s three strategies to get and stay well: control what you actually can control (movement, food choices, who you spend time with) since so much else feels out of your hands, build a community (even a small one) to lessen the burden of what you’re going through, and do movement that genuinely brings you joy, whether that’s strength training, Zumba, or just puttering around the kitchen on low-energy days.
“We know that estrogen therapy is safe and estrogen is not a carcinogenic substance.”
Amanda Thebe